Tag Archives: Circulation

MediaGuardian: Sales of Independent’s i continue to fall

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The Guardian reported this morning that sales of the Independent’s new daily compact i are understood to have “dropped off to close to an average daily sale of 70,000”.

Initial sales were thought to be at about 180,000 the report claims, based on information from “several sources”.

In the third week after launch, the week commencing 8 November, average daily sales ranged from about 75,000 to 85,000; by the end of last week average daily sales appeared to be hovering close to 70,000 to 73,000, according to industry sources.

NYT second-quarter operating profit more than twice 2009 figure

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The New York Times Company has reported operating profit for the second-quarter rose to $60.8 million from $23.5 million in the same period the previous year, excluding some special items. The figures show the first increase in quarterly revenue since 2007, as a growth in digital advertising halted decline in print advertising.

The company NYT statement also showed that second-quarter revenue had risen to $589.6 million from $584.5 million one year ago. However, net income dropped to $32 million from $39 million year-over-year.

Digital advertising revenue rose 21 per cent, making up 26 per cent of total ad revenue compared to 22 per cent the year before. They also reported that print advertising has improved, from a 12.3 per cent downturn in the previous quarter, to six per cent.

The company also gained a 3.2 per cent rise in circulation revenue, put down to higher subscription and newsstand prices for both the Times and the Globe.

Globe and Mail: Misunderstanding web metrics can cause lazy journalism

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Interesting column from Roy MacGregor for Canada’s Globe and Mail on the damage that chasing ‘hits’ online can do to journalism and why circulation and web traffic should not be confused with circulation:

Why be a storyteller when a ranter will have far more traffic? Why be investigative when instigative is a far quicker route to success on the web?

(…) It is a terrible vision of what journalism could evolve into as it enters a world it so desperately wishes to own, but has little idea of what the available measures in this digital world actually mean.

Full column at this link…

Forbes.com: Circulation revenue is more stable than paywalls, says Scripps senior VP

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“Based on our experience of publishing on the web for 15 years, paywalls don’t make sense,”says Mark Contreras, senior vice president for newspapers at US publisher E.W. Scripps Co and chairman of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).

In this Forbes.com interview, Contreras refers directly to Scripps’ own experiment with a paid for sports website in Knoxville: “When we took the paywall down, the traffic ballooned and so did its revenue.”

Instead, growing revenue from circulation is preferable and a return to the 1940s newspaper industry model of 60 per cent of revenue from advertising and 40 per cent from circulation is happening, he suggests.

Audience is up. Our subscriber churn has never been lower. Today we have the most stable circulation base we’ve ever had. It’s generating, on a per-unit basis, more than it has in a long time. In some cases double digits.

Full interview at this link…

(Hat tip to @jayrosen_nyu)

Lone Star defies downward trend in revised ABC results

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The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) has today brought out its revised figures for national newspaper circulation in the UK, reducing the headline circulations of titles including the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Financial Times in the light of an investigation into ‘bulk copies’ distributed by Dawson Media Direct, for the London Evening Standard, Mail on Sunday and Sunday Telegraph.

The UK newspaper circulation body revised the figures because audit trails for ‘bulks’ did not comply with ABC rules.

Earlier this year, the Financial Times reduced its use of bulks, and this week Guardian News and Media announced that it was currently ditching its bulk distribution completely.

A brief summary of today’s ABC results:

  • The Sunday Times was the only ‘quality’ Sunday title to post a year-on-year rise in sales (2.74 per cent). On average the ‘quality’ Sunday titles posted a 2.77 per cent year-on-year fall.  The Independent on Sunday posted the biggest year-on-year drop – 19.98 per cent.
  • All the daily titles audited posted a year-on-year drop in sales, apart from The Star which increased its circulation by 20.12 per cent compared with July 2008.
  • The Sun recorded a tiny drop of 0.4 per cent year-on-year and although the Daily Mirror was down 7.16 per cent compared with last year’s figures, month-on-month the title’s sales rose by 0.73 per cent.

A more in-depth analysis of these results is available on Guardian.co.uk.

Independent.co.uk: Gossip sites put heat on celeb mags in latest ABCs

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Sales of celebrity magazines have plunged in the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations – a result of the economic downturn and the rising popularity of online competitors.

Record web traffic for Northcliffe Media’s regional titles

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Northcliffe Media’s 50 local ‘Thisis’ newspaper websites have collectively grown their unique users by 56 per cent year-on-year.

According to internal data supplied by the group, its sites gleaned 2,740,000 uniques for January, with visits up 56 per cent to 7,670,000 and page views up 43 per cent to 51,000,000 – the first time the 50m barrier has ever been broken in a single month by Northcliffe, a company statement said.

Northcliffe’s parent company Daily Mail and General Trust revealed in a trading statement earlier this week that its regional news division had seen a 90 per cent increase in digital revenue during the final quarter of 2007.